In today's computing environments, many users wish to send communications over open communication channels that may be monitored by third parties. In these instances, the third parties may block or intercept messages of a certain type. In order to address the possibility of a third party monitoring communications over open communication channels, methodologies have been devised to establish secure channels over open communication channels. In particular, secure connections over open communication channels are established between two endpoints. Information that travels over the open communication channel via the secure connection is manipulated such that a third party monitoring the open communication channel cannot detect the contents of the information traveling therethrough.
However, in order to establish the secure connection, each of the endpoints must have software installed thereon that allows for the establishment of the secure connection which is problematic for a number of reasons. First, if a sender that has this software wishes to send information via a secure connection to a recipient that does not have the software, the sender cannot send the information over the secure connection. Instead, the sender must use an unsecure connection over the open communication channel. Second, the process of installing the software is problematic in view of the resources that are required for such an installation, such as the cost of the actual software and the time associated with installing the software. Moreover, many users lack the technical ability to install the software.
Accordingly, what is needed is a method for sending a secure message between two endpoints that have disparate security protocols. Moreover, a need exists for a method that allows a sender to send a secure message to a recipient as a non-secure message.